


Here and Now

by CannibalKats



Series: Catalyst [4]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Coming Out, Family Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-24 23:30:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CannibalKats/pseuds/CannibalKats
Summary: Yoosung and Saeran have been together for more than a year and Yoosung has decided to come out to his parents over Easter holiday.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Probably between two or three years after the secret end.  
> Possible hinted at spoiler for the secret end?  
> Inspired by [Ely](http://mysticmessengervibes.tumblr.com/)  
> ( [Their AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ely/pseuds/Ely/) ) and our discussion about how good Saeran probably is with kids.

Yoosung wasn’t _exactly out_ to his family.  He wasn’t exactly in the closet either.  Mostly the Kim family simply didn’t talk about the elephant in the room.  Or rather the 5’6” pastel punk that was never more than an arms length from Yoosung anytime his family visited. 

After weeks of hand wringing and Saeran telling him _repeatedl_ y that it wasn’t a big deal, Yoosung had decided that he was definitely going to bring his boyfriend home for Easter.  This time, he promised, he would hold his hand and answer honestly if anyone asked.

Definitely.

Probably.

If _they_ asked.

The moment they’d stepped off the train he’d changed his mind.  His face had paled and he’d frozen.

“We should just go back.  We can— we can order pizza and buy discount chocolate,” Yoosung says, tightening his grip on Saeran’s hand, eyes glued to the exit.

“You want to just sit her until the next train then?”  Saeran’s voice was irritated but if Yoosung had bothered to look at him he would have seen the grin on his face.  If you couldn’t tell the Choi’s were twins all they had to do was grin like that.

“Yes,” Yoosung huffs.  He drops Saeran’s hand to better hug his bag and sits defiantly in one of the hard plastic chairs.

Saeran runs a hand through his hair and tries not to laugh.  “I’ve already met your parents,” he says softly.  “You don’t have to tell them if you’re not ready, I don’t mind.”

The station is busy with people coming home for the holiday and while the two boys are not causing a scene they do garner a few curious looks.

“I mind,” Yoosung mumbles into his bag, lavender eyes flicking up to finally look at Saeran.

Saeran wrestles the bag away from him and sets it on the floor between his feet, without it the blond boy’s hands drop uselessly to his sides and his shoulders slump against the back of the chair.  Saeran sits beside him; he takes Yoosung’s limp hand in his and squeezes it tightly.

Yoosung looks at him like he’s waiting for him to say something but Saeran simply holds his hand and stares ahead.

They’d been officially together for a year, out to their friends for almost as long, and somewhere in-between for longer than Saeran could quantify.  Despite how terrible he’d been in those early days Yoosung had always come back with kind words and peace offerings, by the time Saeran had approached a place where he recognized his own shitty behaviors Yoosung had admitted he’d had his own _dubious_ reasons for approaching him.

They’d bonded over being terrible excuses for people while assuring each other that neither was as bad as they thought they were.  A strange start for a friendship let alone the proper relationship it had become. 

Saeran knows that Yoosung is more of a pessimist than he appears, he knows right now as he squeezes his hands he’s imagining all the ways he’s convinced this will go wrong.  His parents were conservative, they were Christians, they’d both seen plenty of stories of how wrong it could go.

“Do you really want to go back,” he says quietly, “you could just say you missed the train.”

Yoosung makes a noise between a laugh and sob. “I don’t kn—”

“There you are,” Saeran recognizes Yoosung’s Mother’s voice from half way across the terminal. 

He let go of Yoosung’s hand and almost leaps to his feet.  Mrs. Kim might be conservative, and she might frown at his hair and his make-up but she’d always been kind to him.  Yoosung sometimes teased him after his parents left that Saeran tried harder to impress her than he did.

“Sorry Mom,” Yoosung mumbles as his mother pulls him into a hug.  Saeran can see a taller girl not far behind with the same lavender eyes as Yoosung.

Mrs. Kim turns to him and smiles. “Yoosung must have you on a leash the way he drags you along with him,” she chuckles pulling him into a hug.

He tries not to freeze up and manages to relax a little but not quite quickly enough to return her greeting.  He doesn’t fail to notice Yoosung’s red face as he whispers to the girl, who he can see now is definitely his sister.

“Your father was certain you’d missed your train,” his mother laughed. “But I told him after last year you wouldn’t dare.”

Yoosung shoots Saeran a look over his mother’s shoulder and Saeran covers his face to hide the smile.

They sit in the back of his mother’s car listening to the women up front discuss and delegate all the things that need to be done before the rest of the family arrives the next day.  A hundred questions are presented to decide their role in the whole thing.

“Can your _friend_ cook?”

“What does your _friend_ eat?”

“Does your _friend_ know—”

He can see Yoosung’s shoulders twitch every time they say the word friend and Saeran does his best to answer for himself, a little overwhelmed at the tag team from the front of the car.

“I hope you don’t mind sleeping in Yoosung’s room,” his mother smiles.

Yoosung blushes.  His sister’s kids would be sleeping in the spare room they explain.

“Sorry,” she shrugs, “he snores.”

“I know,” Saeran says.  “It’s fine.”

Yoosung forgets to breathe but no one even blinks.  He tries to breath normally when he realizes that of course his friend probably has slept in his small apartment before, both the twins had, even Zen had stayed over a few times.

The boys are given jobs and take their things to Yoosung’s room before they start.  The walls are bright blue and Saeran teases him about all the academic awards pinned to the corkboard over his desk.  Yoosung stares at it while Saeran takes a moment to pull out his medications so he won’t forget to take them in the morning.

When he turns Yoosung is tearing a photo off the board and shoving it in a drawer.  He wraps one arm around his waist and rests his head on Yoosungs shoulder.

“Was that—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Yoosung nods.

There’s a silence that follows, he wants to tell Yoosung that he doesn’t have to forget about his cousin because of who she became but he can’t make the words form.  He takes in the layers of ribbons and certificates.

“God my boyfriend is a fucking nerd,” he whispers.

Yoosung and Saeran are on dusting and childproofing duty.  Saeran wields the dusting rag while Yoosung lifts knick knacks and other breakables to surfaces unreachable by tiny hands.  His sister’s kids squeal and play, running in and out of every room in the house.  Saeran can’t believe there are only two of them, it sounds like a stampede as they round the corner running directly into Yoosung and then giggling and running in the opposite direction.

When they finish Saeran stretches out on the couch and throws his arm over his eyes.  “Just listening to them is exhausting,” he laughs.

Yoosung laughs and leaves him alone in the room to make sure his mother and sister have nothing more for them to do.

“Go on,” he hears a woman’s voice and peeks under his arm towards the door.

Yoosung’s sister is crouched over the smaller of her two children, a little girl with bright blue eyes and two missing teeth, her chubby cheeks flush red and she looks between him and her mother nervously.

“It’s ok,” her mother urges her on and he swings his legs off the couch and sits up.

He smiles at her and she takes a few steps into the room towards him.  “You’re hair’s really pretty,” she says quietly.

He blinks for a minute.  He didn’t have much experience with kids, they made him nervous mostly. “Th-thank you,” he says carefully.

Emboldened by the nervous way he answered her she skips the next few steps towards him and presses her palms to his knees staring up into his confused face. “It looks like cotton candy,” she whispers reverently.

“Remember that talk we had about personal space,” her mother scolds her, seeing the startled look on his face and coming towards them to retrieve her.

“Can I touch it?” she grins widely and he frowns for a minute before bending his head to let her ruffle his hair.  He can hear Yoosung’s quiet laugh before he lifts his head.  The little girls hand still buried in his hair as she looks back at her uncle.  “Your boyfriend’s hair is really soft,” she laughs squealing as her mother scoops her up and shushes her.

“W-what?” Yoosung stammers. 

The two of them blush and Yoosung hides his face in his hands.

Saeran’s heart beats faster and he tries not to laugh nervously, tries to think of something to say.  The little girl protests loudly demanding to know what she’d said.

“— you said!” she almost shouts at her mother.  “Mommy _you said it first_.”

Saeran can’t hold back the bark of a laugh any longer as Yoosung almost collapses against the door frame.

“I’m sorry,” his sister says, laughing a little herself.

The three of them are blushing ; Saeran’s ears are red, her cheeks a little pink, Yoosung’s entire face bright crimson. “How,” he whispers behind his hands.

“She must have overheard me and Mom talking,” she shrugs as if it’s not a big deal, as if he hadn’t been agonizing over telling them, and pulls her brother’s hands away from his face.

“What?” Yoosung squeaks, slapping her hands away.

Saeran laughs again, all those weeks of freaking out, of imagining every worst case scenario he could, Yoosung had gone through it all for nothing.

“H-how,” he stammers, “I didn’t, I haven’t—”

“Told them?” She snorts.  “I know, Mom said not to say anything until you were ready to tell us.”

Saeran cackles and Yoosung _glares_ at him.

“Little ears are everywhere, I’m sorry,” his sister pulls him into a hug and messes up his hair.  “I’ll make sure she knows not to say anything tomorrow.”

“But _how_?” he almost whines pulling away and frowning at her.

“He’s always at your place when they visit,” his sister lists off on her fingers, “you insist that he comes with you when they take you to lunch, you talk about him non-stop, and—”

“Stop, stop, stop,” he says covering her mouth, Saeran can hear her muffled laughter.

“I’m not going to tell them,” Yoosung declares later when they’re lying in his little twin bed that night.

“Because they ruined the surprise?” Saeran snorts.

Yoosung gives him a little shove but they both laugh.

*

There are so many kids in Yoosungs family.  His sister and he are the oldest of his cousins and the little house his parents live in is full.  Saeran thinks that the people under 15 might outnumber those over and he finds himself followed by a line of little monsters under 10 anytime he tries to slip away for a cigarette.  He’s eternally grateful for his Xanax prescription and the fact that Yoosung had the forethought to put the bottle in his pocket when they’d gotten up in the morning.

Saeran has never experienced family like this, so many kids who simply know each other running around not without rules but with so much freedom.  Yoosung’s niece has become his ambassador leading the others to him as she describes the way his hair feels, one of them likes his bracelet, so he lets him try it on, another little girl likes his choker so he lets her wear it, by the time they sit down to eat almost every kid between 5 and 10 is wearing something of his and a silly grin.

Almost as silly as the grin on his boyfriend’s face.

The over-twenty crowd eats dessert stand while the teenaged cousins clear the table and stack the dishes, Yoosung smiling smugly that he’s finally outgrown this stage of the family gathering and teasing his boyfriend about the four toddlers  that seem to have found a new home at Saeran’s feet. 

At least three of Yoosung’s Aunts hand Saeran a strange infant without even asking and he’s grateful every time Yoosung reaches over and takes it from him.  Kids were one thing, they were loud and sticky and had no sense of personal space but what if he dropped a baby? What if he held it wrong?  Could you hold a baby wrong?  Too tight maybe?

Yoosung hadn’t noticed Saeran slip away, not until his Aunt recruited his help to round up her small army of children.  Yoosung knew the crowd had been getting to him and the trail of kids following after him like ducklings had kept him from having a cigarette all day.  He assumes, as he takes the little jacket and boots from his aunt and starts looking for the preschooler he’s being sent to wrangle, that his boyfriend has either gone to bed or for a walk.

The living room is dim when he peeks around the corner, only waning light window filtered by shear curtains that cover the big picture window to light it.  The perfect place for a four year old to hide, he thinks glancing at the deep shadows, when he hears someone breathing in the shadows.  “I’ve found you,” he sings flicking the lamp on.

Saeran’s brows knit together slightly and then relax, the little body sprawled across his chest twitches and stretches.  Saeran’s fingers stretch wide on the child’s back as Yoosung tries to quietly fish his phone out of his pocket.  That was not the cousin he’d been sent to find but he would gather this one, _after_ he takes this picture.

“Oh no,” he hisses when the flash goes off and Saeran’s eyes shoot open.

“Delete it.” He whispers frowning at Yoosung.

“Delete what?” Yoosung tries to sound innocent as he shoves his phone back in his pocket.

Saeran adjusts the sleeping toddler as he sits up and narrows his eyes on his boyfriend.  “That picture, delete it.”

Yoosung smiles and scoops his cousin out of Saeran’s arms.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about I was just using the flashlight on my phone.”

Saeran stretches and shakes his head.  He taps the pocket of his sweater noticing the quiet sounds of most of the kids in the house being either gone or asleep and knowing he can finally have the cigarette he’s been craving all day.  “When I come back,” he smiles and yawns, “it better be gone.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to add any Yooran stuff I write to this file? Because apparently that's how I warm up now, just Yooran fluff?

The sound of an avalanche in the kitchen is what woke him.  Blankets still tucked tight around him despite the summer heat and no sign of Yoosung anywhere near him.  He sighs and wiggles his arms free of his blanket cocoon.  From the sounds of crashing and whispered cursing he knows at the very least Yoosung isn’t still playing LOLOL but the other side of the bed is cold and he has to wonder if his boyfriend has even been to sleep yet.

Saeran yawns and listens to the muffled sounds of a losing battle coming from the kitchen, his phone reads 4:37am, the sun hasn’t even begun to rise but Saeran doesn’t raise an eyebrow. Classes have been out for two weeks and Yoosung has been taking advantage of this time between school and his summer job to regain his title on the Shooting Star server. 

“Hey Dummy,” Saeran calls turning the lamp on, “it’s four in the morning what the hell are you doing out there.”  He’s laughing as he swings his legs out of bed.  It wouldn’t be the first time this week his boyfriend had gotten the time of day wrong in his gaming haze.

“Don’t— Stop!  Stay there, don’t come out here.  Don’t get up!” Yoosung yells from the kitchen, his voice frantic.

Saeran is already half way there but he does what he’s told, stopping in the middle of the room.  “Do you,” he clears his throat, “do you need a hand or something?”

“N-NO!”  Yoosung shouts, his voice cracking.

Saeran chuckles, the way he’s acting Saeran would almost think he _caught him_ , but he knows his boyfriend and he knows his habits and he was defiantly not jerking off in their kitchen, especially not while, apparently, tossing things out of the cupboards.

“Are you sure?”

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Yoosung’s voice has settled as he slips his head around the doorframe, “go back to sleep I’ll be there soon.”

His bangs are pinned on top of his head, the way he does when he’s studying and there’s something smudged across his forehead, Saeran takes a step forward with the urge to wipe it off, kiss his face, drag him to the bed and wrap himself around Yoosung until he relaxes and falls asleep, certainly nothing he’s doing in the kitchen can’t wait a few more hours.

“S-stop!”  Yoosung says throwing his hands out and rushing to stop him.

Saeran swipes his thumb across the smudge on Yoosung’s forehead.  “Is this _chocolate_?”

Yoosung lets out a squeak and pushes Saeran’s hand away.  “N-no, it’s not, it’s something else go to bed.”  He tries to make Saeran turn around, tries to push him towards the bed but Saeran doesn’t budge, he takes a few determined steps towards the kitchen, Yoosung sliding backwards on sock feet as he tries to stop him.

“N-no!” he yelps, defeated. “S-stop, you’ll ruin the surprise!”

That stops him.  The smirk on his face fades to confusion.  “What surprise?”

Yoosung lets out a hiss between his teeth.  “Please just go back to bed?”

He tries.  He nods his head, eyebrows still knotted together at what could possibly be happening, and turns around, he yawns again on his way back to their bed and curls up in his blanket.  He closes his eyes, tries to fall back asleep but it starts to nag at him.

Had he forgotten something?  He wracks his brain, Yoosung was a romantic, he remembered every little detail and he liked to celebrate all the ones he didn’t think were embarrassing but Saeran only remembered the big things, the day they met, they first time they kissed, their first real date, the day the decided to be exclusive, the day he moved in, none of those things happened in June.

But he knew Yoosung had a better, more thorough list.  The first time they’d held hands, the first time Saeran had smiled at him, the first time they’d spoken, their first argument and subsequently the first time either of them had apologized.  Yoosung kept track of everything without writing a single thing down and Saeran could barely keep their first kiss straight from the first time they’d held hands.

He rolls over and grabs his phone, his birthday was last week.  The RFA had thrown him and Saeyoung a party at Jaehee’s café after it had closed.  There was still cake and pastries in their fridge left over, and the cards were still pinned on Yoosung’s corkboard.  He was wearing the sweater and pajama pants Yoosung had given him right now.

“Are you sure I can’t help?” He calls out.

“No, go to sleep,” Yoosung yells.

Saeran groans, he’s wide awake now.  He can’t turn his brain off, can’t stop thinking about what he’s forgotten.  He opens the messenger app but the chatroom is empty.  His brother and Zen had just left.  He hovers his thumb over Saeyoung’s name and weighs his options before he selects it and sends him a text.  His brother and his boyfriend were best friends, if anyone knows what he’s forgetting it’s Saeyoung.

[Unknown]: Did I forget something?  
[707]: Is that a trick question?  
[Unknown]:  Yoosung says he has a surprise, I fucking forgot something again, I don’t want to be an asshole today.  
[707]: hmmm, sorry bro you’re always an asshole.  
[Unknown]: Fuck off  
[707]: It’s the Choi curse, nothing we can do about it  
[Unknown]: You can just say you don’t know  
[707]: But maybe I do know~  
[Unknown]: WTF Saeyoung  
[707]: I’m not going to ruin his surprise, are you kidding?  I’m not stupid.  
  
Saeran couldn’t tell if his brother was messing with him or if he really knew something.  There’s a few thumps from the kitchen a muffled curse and then the glow of the flashlight on Yoosung’s phone.

“Oh,” Yoosung squeaks when Saeren turns the lamp on, “you’re still up.”

Saeran frowns and huffs as Yoosung crawls across him. “You smell like chocolate.”

“No I don’t,” Yoosung laughs.  “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”  He wraps his arms around Saeran and buries his face in his shoulder.

“Ugh,” Saeran groans.  “I give up.”

“What?”

“I give up, I forgot whatever you’re excited about.”

Yoosung’s face presses into his shoulder to suppress a snort.

“It’s not funny,” Saeran grumps, “this stuff is important to you and I can’t even remember to write it down so I don’t forget.”

Yousung laughs outright and presses a kiss to Saeran’s forehead.  “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then _what is it_ ,” he growls exasperated.

“Just go to sleep,” Yoosung coos. “You’ll see.”

He’s not sure when he falls asleep.  He remembers Yoosung laughing softly against him, and cursing just how fast his boyfriend could fall asleep.  Yoosung had been snoring before Saeran could even argue with him.

But now as his mind slowly rises to wakefulness he _knows_ he smells chocolate, he can feel the sun from the window warm across his face and he stretches out in the beam like a cat before opening his eyes.  He reaches beside him meaning to shake Yoosung awake, demand his surprised or at the very least an explanation.

But Yoosung’s side of the bed is cold and empty and Saeran groans. “What the fuck are you doing?” he growls exasperated.

“Stay there,” Yoosung sings from the kitchen, “just two more minutes, I promise.”

Saeran makes a loud, disapproving noise but he stays where he is.  He folds his arms beneath his head and watches the ceiling, counts the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d helped Yoosung stick up there and listens to Yoosung humming in the kitchen.

He’s at 43 when he notices exactly what Yoosung is humming and turns his head.

Yoosung’s bangs are still pinned out of his face, the rest of his hair pulled into a nubby pony tail and he’s grinning like an idiot over a small cake and four huge scoops of bright green ice cream, humming _Happy Birthday_.

Saeran pushes himself to sitting and _stares_ at Yoosung.  There’s frosting in his eyebrow, icing sugar in his hair and the first coherent thought that comes into his head is that the kitchen is probably a _fucking disaster_.  And he has to bite his tongue from saying it.  “What is this?”

“Happy Birthday!” Yoosung cheers, sitting down on the bed next to him.

“My birthday was last week,” he can’t stop frowning, he doesn’t mean to, he wants to smile but he’s so confused. 

“I uh, I know,” Yoosung stammers, blushing.  “I just thought, heh, I thought,” he looks away, “it’s stupid never mind.”  Yoosung shoves the plate with the cake and icecream at him.

Saeran looks down at it, mint ice cream and chocolate cake, Yoosung would have had to hide all this, or wait until he fell asleep to go buy it.  There are two forks and star funfetti.  “I’m sorry,” Saeran says softly pulling Yoosung against him. “Please tell me.”

“It’s stupid,” Yoosung repeats, shaking his head.  Saeran picks up one of the forks and Yoosung follows suit.  “Jaehee made Saeyoung’s favorite cake because she didn’t know yours, and you said before –uh before you’d never really got a birthday, and it didn’t seem _fair_.”

“What’s not fair about it?”  Saeran hadn’t really thought much about it, he’d never expected anyone to know anything about him he hadn’t told them, and he had never really _thought_ about his birthday that much, it was just a day as far as he was concerned.

“Well you’ve never had your own birthday,” Yoosung’s voice his high, quiet and nervous, his leg shakes as he leans into Saeran, “and Saeyoung got, you know a few years to celebrate alone before we even knew about you, I don’t know it’s stupid I thought you deserved your own birthday.”

“That’s not stupid,” Saeran smiles finally.  “That’s really thoughtful. Thank you Yoosung.”  He turns and presses his lips to Yoosung’s quickly, cold and sweet from the icecream.

They sit quietly on the bed eating together for a few moments before Yoosung can’t take it anymore. “Do you like the cake?”

“It’s really good,” he nods.  “Did you get it from Jaehee’s?”

Yoosung pouts. “No, I made it myself, what do you think I was doing this morning?”

Saeran chuckles. “Honestly I thought you were having some kind of fit.  It sounded like a natural disaster in there.”

He blushes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t, uh oh no.” He stands up suddenly.  “You can’t, uh, you shouldn’t go in the kitchen.”


End file.
